A tango dancer changes her boots for high-heeled shoes before a performance in Buenos Aires' La Boca neighbourhood. Picture: AFP PHOTO Source: National Features

EVA Peron, the tango, football and food the people of Buenos Aires are at their most passionate when it comes to all these things.

The traditional rivalry of cross-town football teams Boca Juniors and River Plate is so fierce that even Coca-Cola was forced to abandon its traditional red-and-white (the colours of River Plate) and turn to black-and-white to advertise on the hoardings around the stadium of Boca Juniors.

The people of Buenos Aires still love all things Peron.

They are touched by mention of the Peron era of government and their beloved Evita, who died in 1952. The Peronists are still strong in government and include among their followers current Argentine President Christina Kirchner.

And then there is the dance, the tango, created by European immigrants to Buenos Aires in the 19th century. Although this most passionate of dances seemed to be on the wane some years ago, the locals now claim it is being taken up again by a new generation, eager to share the intensity of the dance.

And weaving in and out of all these passions is an Argentinian love of fine food and wine.

The people of Buenos Aires are an outgoing, outdoorsy kind of folk.

There are people on the streets until all hours of the morning. They don't seem to even think about heading out to dinner until after 8.30pm and restaurants will still be serving well after midnight.

Wherever you go in this sprawling city there are constant reminders of their great loves.

Built in a checkerboard pattern, the city is flat and relatively simple to find your way around, but our guide Solange Espil from Chimu Adventures says while bus and train fares are cheap, reliability can be an issue on public transport.

Anybody who can afford it drives a car and with a population of more than 15 million in the city and a total population of 40 million in Argentina, things can get a bit crowded on the roads. Taxis are relatively cheap.

Our guide says the people of Buenos Aires believe that the lines on the road are only there as "a suggestion" and that road signs are "ornaments", but somehow drivers manage to reach their destinations.

Spanish is the native tongue of Argentina and in Buenos Aires you'll mostly find somebody able to help out with a bit of English but, once in the back blocks, communication generally reverts to sign language.

The peso is the currency of the land and while we there it was about four pesos to the Australian dollar.

The city, founded by the Spanish in 1580 on the open grasslands of the Pampas, is big on museums.

Among them Museo Evita, which opened in 2001, housed in an aristocratic residence that Juan Peron expropriated.

He converted it into a women's shelter for his wife's quasi-state welfare agency.

Paintings, posters and busts are displayed alongside the outfits Eva Peron wore on tours of Europe, with the star exhibits being two dresses designed by Paco Jamandreu, which she wore for her audiences with the Pope, and her ID card, number 0.000.001.

Tying together two Argentine passions is a newly refurbished restaurant and outdoor terrace, which is arguably better than the museum.

Following a military overthrow, it was feared Eva Peron's body could be used by Peronists as a rallying cry for opposition. It was removed from public viewing and remained hidden until 1971 when her body was entombed in Buenos Aires' grand cemetery.

Although all the 5000 plots in the 6ha cemetery are taken, old tombs are sold through newspaper ads and updated or replaced.

Solange said she had been told that the tomb next to Eva Peron's is for sale at an asking price of $US500,000.

There are no signposts to Peron's tomb and finding it is made harder still because she is buried under her maiden name, Duarte.

Even without Peron's tomb the cemetery, which was opened in 1822, is a fascinating place to wander, with every scrap of land covered in granite, marble and bronze mausoleums. Admission is free.

Another lasting reminder of the Peron legacy is "The Pink House", the offices of President Kirchner, featuring the balcony from where the Perons made their public speeches to crowds in the square below.

At dinner at Agraz, the stylish restaurant in the Caesar Park Hotel where we are staying, the hotel's sales director Alejandro Babato says Peron is still strong in the memories of Argentines, something that has been reinforced with the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical Evita, which played to sell-out audiences in Buenos Aires for years.

Babato says he still gets a thrill every time he hears the song Don't Cry For Me Argentina.

He is not so thrilled, though, at the performance of the football team he follows, River Plate, which last year was relegated to the second division putting an end, for the time being, to the on-field rivalry with the city's other big club Boca Juniors.

Just around the corner from the Boca Juniors stadium is tourist precinct La Boca, featuring another reminder of footballing passion.

A caricature model of Argentine football legend Diego Maradona hangs from one of the brightly painted buildings in the district.

This is a poor area of town and avoided even by locals at night, but during the day the buildings, built from leftover materials from the nearby port and painted with whatever paint they could get their hands on, provide a colourful backdrop for lots of tourist traps.

The bars and shops here make much of the tango, with costumed dancers making their pitch for tourists to pay to have photographs taken with them.

A more serious side of tango comes from places like Confiteria Ideal, a busy tango spot that has a full schedule of classes by day, but really comes alive at night with the milonga (a tango dance party), and live orchestra.

We went along to Cafe de los Angelitos, a bar from 1890 that has been renovated as a tango theatre, combining a gourmet dinner and tango show that provides an excellent insight into why the passionate tango has enchanted Buenos Aires.

The writer flew as a guest to South America with LAN Airlines.

FIVE THINGS YOU MIGHT NOT KNOW ABOUT SOUTH AMERICA

1. In the late 1880s, a few hundred Australian socialists sailed out of Sydney Harbour bound for Paraguay, where they would start a utopian community. Many returned to Australia but some descendants still remain in Paraguay.

2. South America is home to about 390 million people. The populations range from a few thousand (combined) in the British territories of the Falkland and South Sandwich Islands and South Georgia, to about 196 million in Brazil.

3. Foodies have a lot to thank South America for, including potatoes, tomatoes and chillies.

4. Landlocked Bolivia has been involved in a dispute with Chile, its neighbour to the southwest, over maritime access to the South Pacific Ocean since the 1880s. Colombia weighed into the dispute last month, backing Bolivia.

5. Venezuela is home to the world's tallest waterfall, Angel Falls, with an uninterrupted water descent of 807m.

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BUENOS AIRES

Getting there

LAN Airlines has daily one-stop flights from Sydney to Santiago, Chile, with onward service to more than 80 destinations in South America. LAN also offers nonstop flights between Sydney and Santiago every Monday, Wednesday and Saturday via a codeshare partnership with Qantas.

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